MLK, inauguration day, a word about patience.

Hello newsletter readers, happy MLK Day and happy Inauguration Day!

We're 20 days into 2025 and I hope you're making progress on all of your resolutions. Don't give up, don't allow the haters to make fun of you as you're working to progress to your better self.

You got this and we believe in you.

Below is January's newsletter. Read. Enjoy. Engage. Share.

STUFF WE BELIEVE YOU'LL ENJOY (and find helpful!)

???? MLK.

Today is Martin Luther King Day, some stats, a song to listen to and a letter to read.

• MLK and the inauguration fall on the same day this year. This has only happened one other time in history, the swearing in of President Bill Clinton for his second term, January 20, 1997. It will happen again in 2053 for Inauguration Day for the 2052 Presidential Election. Where will you be then?
• U2 and MLK. U2's song Pride (In the Name of Love) carry these memorializing lyrics,

//Early morning, April four

//Shot rings out in the Memphis sky

//Free at last, they took your life

//They could not take your pride

• Letter from a Birmingham Jail is one of MLKs most significant pieces of work. It's dramatic, it's honest and he puts words to the hypocrisy of the time. Read the letter in full here, below is a line that captures the spirit of the letter,

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly"

???? Inauguration Day.

If the inauguration of Donald Trump teaches us anything it gives us a solid lesson in leadership: persevere.

Donald Trump is now the second president to ever have two non-consecutive terms; the only other U.S. president who accomplished this was Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president, serving from 1885 to 1889 and then again from 1893 to 1897.

...

A clever juxtaposition from The Dispatch,

“'I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time,' Biden said in April 2019 when he announced his presidential campaign. 'But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are.'

Trump is scheduled to be sworn in today at noon."

???? A word about patience.

People do not like waiting for things, we want things now and we want solutions now. The problem is, getting our things now and our solutions now basically means, our things are worse and so are our solutions.

I remember during the times of the COVID lockdowns there was this weird reaction where everyone went out and bought all of the toilet paper from the stores. It had nothing to do with COVID but it felt like we were doing something.

Oliver Burkeman in his book, Four Thousand Weeks, makes an interesting observation about our inability to allow time to pass by at a normal pace. He says,

"We're made so uneasy by the experience of allowing reality to unfold at its own speed that when we're faced with a problem, it feels better to race toward a resolution--any resolution, really, so long as we can tell ourselves we're 'dealing with' the situation, thereby maintaining the feeling of being in control."

This isn't the way good and meaningful and valuable work is accomplished. It's accomplished when we're at our best and our sharpest, when we're practicing patience, about allowing life to progress at a "normal speed" without the need for things to happen faster and faster. Again Burkeman, "if you're willing to endure the discomfort of not knowing, a solution will often present itself."

Wise words, well done Burkeman.